About number gesture:
Which contribution to verbal cardinal
knowledge development?
Laurence Rousselle, Marie-Pascale Noël & Line Vossius
² Sustain the acquisition of the verbal number sequence and of the counting procedure
Iconic cardinal representation
Fingers: a transitional tool
Acquiring the meaning of number words is a long-lasting process (Wynn, 1992)
• Few studies • Contradictory results : ² Young children (2- to 5- y.o.) are more accurate to give a number using number words than using number gestures (Nicoladis, Pika & Marentette, 2010) ² Young children (3- to 5- y.o.) who do not have full cardinal knowledge are more accurate labbeling small sets/estimating large sets using number gestures compared to number words (Gunderson, Speapen, Gibson & Goldin-Meadow, 2015)
Research questions
What’s the role played by fingers in the acquisition of verbal number words? • Is there an age at which children are more skilled to represent number on their fingers than verbally? • Do finger-based numerical representation contribute to the development of verbal cardinal knowledge?Longitudinal design
Give-a-number with number words « Give-me [two] frogs» Give-a-number with number gestures « Give-meA
frogs » T2 N = 47 3y; 4 months T3 N = 47 3y; 8 months T4 N = 47 4 y; 0 months T1 N = 47 3y;0 monthAt each time point
Results
Repeated measures Anova : Modality (2) x Age (4) 3 4 5 le dge le ve l"Give a number" tasks
Number Words Number Gestures
Age : p <.01 Modality : ns Age x Modality : ns
β10*(Age) + β20*(Nb gesture cardinal level) + β 30*(Interaction between Age & Nb gesture level) + r0i+ eti Time related changes in finger-based numerical representation predict changes in verbal cardinal knowledge development
